A communications channel refers to the medium used to convey information from a sender to a receiver. Communications channels include voice and data channels. A receiver may have to authenticate to a sender to access the communications channel. An authentication procedure (e.g., involving a user name, password, a pass phrase, a personal identification number (PIN), etc) may establish the Identity of the receiver with some degree of confidence, and the sender may grant access privileges to that identity.
If receiver is authenticated to the sender by a first communications channel and would like to engage a second communications channel to access the sender, the receiver has to separately authenticate to the sender via the second communications channel. This is burdensome and time-consuming to both the sender and the receiver.